Monday night the referees at the end of the Dallas/Minnesota game swallowed their whistles on a final shot where Love went up to try and tie the game and Shawn Marion reached in and got some ball and some arm, knocking the shot away. Dallas was up two at the time, Love would have been awarded two free throws and a chance to send the game to overtime.

Here is the official statement from the league.

“Through postgame video review, we have determined that Minnesota’s Kevin Love was fouled on the right arm by Dallas’ Shawn Marion while attempting a two-point field goal. Love should have been awarded two free throws with one second left on the clock.”

That apology and $4 will buy you a latte at Starbucks.

Minnesota still suffers the loss in the standings, in a game between two teams fighting for those final playoff spots in the West.

Of course, the Timberwolves have more to blame than the refs here — get more than 5 points total from your bench players and maybe it doesn’t come down to a final shot.

Never leave out a chance to bash on the Timberwolves. Bench play was horrible, but the comeback they put on from a 20+ point defecit was pretty fun to watch. I think you might want to harp on the fact the TWO officials were directly on that, and both “swallowed” their whistles. NBA is becoming unwatchable for me. Referees are one sided. One think KLove might take away from this is his complaining on every call ever made. You won’t get many calls when you’re chirping all game, every game.

Not only that .. but Rick Adleman should be mad at himself. He had two chances at the end to run a play and he did not. Second chance you throw the ball to Love in the corner with no shot. Be mad at yourself Rick. Mavs gave you multiple chances to take the game and he failed.

One sided? So which side were they on in this game? They were in Minnesota – the Wolves shot 9 more free throws – the Wolves had 5 less fouls called on them. It’s not like the Mavs are some glamour team that the NBA would want to protect.

Let’s just call it what it is ..All Sports have Serious Mob ties. Basketball as bad as any other sport .
Stern and Selig and Goodell= are flat out Criminals…..These refs ought to be fired immediately no questions asked..Instead they will be doing playoff games……Sports in this country are run by Criminals…..
So is the Media…How come nobody mentions the refs names? …..right

Let’s just call it what it is ..All Sports have Serious Mob ties. Basketball as bad as any other sport .
Stern and Selig and Goodell= are flat out Criminals…..These refs ought to be fired immediately no questions asked..Instead they will be doing playoff games……Sports in this country are run by Criminals…..
So is the Media…How come nobody mentions the refs names? …..right

Well I answered this already in a reply below, but I’ll answer it again here with an additional prologue:

Some years ago I read a TrueHoop article about Jack McCallum’s book Seven Seconds or Less – I glanced through the notes and saw this:

p74 scouting report on Eddie House: “won’t shoot unless he has it in his hands” p75 who knew: referees are fined for bad calls p89 Tim Thomas is a “ball-stopper” doesn’t move ball well p90 D’Antoni says they may have “loused up our offense” with Thomas

I bought the book sometime later and remembered that snippet about ref fines (the issue comes up a lot) – here is the excerpt from the book:

…Stu Jackson, the NBA’s director of operations… is charged with everything relating to the game itself… that task boils down to handling team complaints about referees, meting out punishments to players and coaches… and – deep below the radar – fining officials for bad calls. While the league announces every dollar taken from a player or coach for b*tching about the officials, referee fines are kept in-house.

I just now found another article referencing referee fines/punishment – “Referee Stafford received two-game suspension”:

The NBA does not announce disciplinary action taken against its referees, but ESPN.com has learned that two game officials were recently sanctioned in the wake of run-ins with Miami coach Pat Riley — one suspended and the other fined.

NBA vice president of operations Stu Jackson declined comment through a spokesman Wednesday, citing the league’s policy of not discussing internal communications with its referees.

Steve Javie’s wikipedia page mentions this fine.

The Stafford/Javie event is from 11 years ago, and Jack McCallum’s book is about 8-9 years old, and most people still don’t know about ref fines. I would say “deep below the radar” is still accurate all these years later.

00maltliquor - Dec 31, 2013 at 12:31 PM

Well…too little too late NBA.

Are you gonna fine these goofball refs for the non-call like you fine the players for speaking out against the refs??
Fair is fair…

I think many of us learned about referee fines for the first time from the same place – page 75 of Jack McCallum’s book, Seven Seconds or Less: My Season on the Bench with the Runnin’ and Gunnin’ Phoenix Suns:

For D’Antoni, the real business of the day – and it is unpleasant business – is calling Stu Jackson, the NBA’s director of operations. Jackson, a former player, coach and general manager, is charged with everything relating to the game itself. During the season, for all intents and purposes, that task boils down to handling team complaints about referees, meting out punishments to players and coaches for technical fouls and flagrant fouls, and – deep below the radar – fining officials for bad calls. While the league announces every dollar taken from a player or coach for b*tching about the officials, referee fines are kept in-house.

why don’t wolves just put out Alexey Shved out of the rotation and put Shabazz in. That would give Shabazz a chance and from there we can see what he can give. He would shoot better than Shved in my opinion.

It wouldn’t work logistically to replay the finish later. If it were against a team in the other conference, it would be a decent chance they wouldn’t face that team again (if the plan would be to make it up before another game). But, even if you did it on an off day, rosters change all the time, so the teams would likely have some different players by the time they met again.

It would make more sense if refs were allowed to replay all questionable calls in the last minute, whether possession, fouls, whatever. Then, the problem could potentially be corrected right away and replayed if needed.

Ed Mallloy blew a wolves game last year, the league admitted. He should be suspended for a while. It was beyond horrible. i was sitting in the front rows and you could hear it. What a joke, maybe people who rip the NBA are on to something. This is the third time in the last year( last year and this year so far) the league has admitted they blew the final call against the wolves.

You keep saying Adelman will get fined. No he wont, the league itself admitted it was a foul. One game can keep you home come playoff time.

Final calls or non-calls are not always the deciding factor in a game. If you take back the two free-throws Love got instead of an inbound at the beginning of the second half, after being fouled on a pass and not on a shooting-attempt, the Wolves would be even.

Maybe fouls and non-called fouls should be reviewable by the refs in general, or the coach should have one or two possibilities to challenge a call.

NBA rigged to enable most profitable teams to succeed. The league does not value the honor of truly competitive sport, but rather the almighty dollar. In that sense, the NBA is a microcosm of American culture.

Explain, then, why last year’s “Final Four” consisted of Memphis, San Antonio, Indiana, and Miami. Not a big market among them. The year before you had Boston in there, but it was them plus Miami, San Antonio, and OKC.

The Heat may draw large TV audiences, true, but they are a mid-market team, more akin to Orlando than New York.

I don’t disagree that the NBA values the almighty dollar more than anything else- it is a business. But why would they have to rig anything? The NBA has been setting ratings records for several years now, and with that comes big money TV contracts. Supplement that with a bunch of new, expensive jerseys to sell every year (alternative, throwback, christmas, etc.) plus arena revenue and there simply is more than enough money to go around.

In the last decade plus, the Spurs have won four titles while the Knicks have largely been awful. How is that rigging for profit? The conspiracy junk breaks down as soon as one looks at history.

You’are correct ! The almighty dollar rules and wherever there is big money you got Big Time Criminals like Stern and his band of Mobsters that control the game…The media wont even the two crooked refs on the take…

I think anytime a pro sports league , Nba, Nfl, Mlb, Nhl, gets a call blatantly wrong then that sports league should be fined. 3 times its happened in the last week! This one, the one where they called a technical on Blake Griffin and kicked him out of the game, and the Nfl game between the Eagles and Cowboys where they shaved 15 seconds off the play clock in the 4th quarter. The refs and officials and clock managers work for their prospective leagues and when they screw up what happens? Nothing. “Oh yeah, we made the wrong call that effected the outcome of the game and possibly the playoffs, but oh well.” The leagues should be fined and money given back to the team that was offended or given to charity.

Not one to defend officiating, but it looked like Marion pretty effectively blocked Malloy’s view from the contact. Can’t say the same for the rest of the crew–still, I guess it was Malloy’s call to make.